1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to energy efficiency and, more particularly, to an auto-aware dynamic control policy for energy efficiency.
2. Introduction
Energy costs continue to escalate in a trend that has accelerated in recent years. Such being the case, various industries have become increasingly sensitive to the impact of those rising costs. One area that has drawn increasing scrutiny is the IT infrastructure. Many companies are now looking at their IT systems' power usage to determine whether the energy costs can be reduced. For this reason, an industry focus on energy efficient networks (IEEE 802.3az) has arisen to address the rising costs of IT equipment usage as a whole (i.e., PCs, displays, printers, switches, servers, network equipment, etc.).
In designing an energy efficient solution, one of the considerations is the traffic profile on the network link. For example, many network links are typically in an idle state between sporadic bursts of data, while in other network links, there can be regular or intermittent low-bandwidth traffic, with bursts of high-bandwidth traffic. Various solutions can seek to adapt the link, link rate, and layers above the link to an optimal solution based on various energy costs and impact on traffic, which itself is dependent on the application. Implementation of various solutions is based on a control policy. What is needed, however, is an auto-aware dynamic control policy for energy efficiency.